‘I just knew it’ says 9-yr-old school boy with calendar in his brain

“He would come to me with his drawing and say ‘this is my daddy, this is my mummy, and this is my brother’ and explain them in details,” Mrs Bola Adeaga, his head of school said.

Nothing better describes Master Siju Olawepo, a nine-year old primary five pupil of Carol School, Agidingbi, Lagos, Nigeria, than a prodigy. He tells what day of the week of any date in history off hand.

Before the discovery of his rare talent, nobody at home,  in school or elsewhere, noticed that he had calender in his brain because they didn’t pay attention to him.

It wasn’t that the boy, from Iludun-Oro, Kwara State, didn’t try to draw such attention to himself. Certainly he did countless times but nobody, including his parents, was interested in reading any meaning to what he was trying to show them.

While describing Siju as an intelligent, cheerful and go-getter pupil, Mrs Adeaga noted that the boy does not forget things no matter how long and does not also like sitting in one place at a stretch for a long time.

“He would just want to stand up and do something else,” she said.

According to her, Siju is popular in school and he is a friend to all. “He goes to teachers in their offices whenever he wants and also walks up to the school’s time keeper to remind him to ring the bell if he realizes it should be break time.

“So, the boy is not only bold, confident and likes to be in his own world, he equally identifies almost every student and member of staff by name,” Mrs Adeaga said.

“Once you tell him your name or birthday, it sinks into his memory and he would tell you when next you meet, including days of your future birthdays notwithstanding the year,” she added.

 

We discovered he has the talent in June 2019 —School

Even when the talent was eventually discovered by the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) teacher of his school, Mr David Ugiomoh, it was reluctantly.

Ugiomoh discovered Siju’s talent last year June. And amazingly, Siju is less than two years in the 35-year-old private school. He joined the school in Primary Four in 2018.

So, Siju had been going to meet his ICT teacher in his office to ask for plain sheets of paper to sketch out calendar. He did the same with his parents at home.

“At times, I would give him and at other times, I would not,” Ugiomoh told Saturday Tribune. “And at times too, I did check what he did but without reading any meaning to it.”

For example, there was a particular day, according to the ICT teacher, when he reluctantly checked Siju’s work and assumed it was like every other work.

“That was before now and that day, he sketched out Year 2020 calender.  I left him in my office for class and when he showed it to me I assumed he copied it from somewhere, especially that most calenders do have January and February of the following year. That was how I dismissed him that day just like the previous times.

And even on the actual day I discovered the talent in him, I did not want him to enter my office so as not to disturb me because I had much work to do.  Instead, I asked him to go to the school secretary to collect as much paper as he wanted, knowing, full-well that he would not likely be given. But somehow, I allowed him to come in while I concentrated on what I was doing. I didn’t know he had picked some papers from the computer printer until I raised up my head and saw him writing. He retrieved all the papers from him but something told me to look at what he was writing. It was sketching out calander for Year 2023. He had finished with the first two months of the year and was already in the month of March when I retrieved those papers.

“He wasn’t happy that I did that.Then I decided without knowing why to compare what he did to the Year 2023 calendar on the internet on my phone and I found that the two were tallied. I was confused because I knew he didn’t come to my office with any paper and that the pen he used was taken from my table.”

That was how the ICT teacher abandoned his work to test Siju by picking different dates both in the past and in future randomly and Siju quoted each day correctly.

“We were on this marathon exercise such that I didn’t know when he finished all my papers. I then took him to the head of school,” Ugiomoh narrated.

“I too found the news very strange,” the Head of School, Mrs Bola Adeaga, told Saturday Tribune in an interview, adding that, even at that, she still subjected the boy to a test.

“I was dazed by the results I got including quoting the day my birthday for 2019 fell and many other dates in the past and far distant future that I gave to him randomly,” she said.

However, Siju had been displaying some special traits before then even to the Head of School such as coming to show to her some of her artistic drawing, especially the caricature of his parents’ portraits.

That is not all about Siju. Mrs Adeaga continued her explanation which was confirmed by Siju’s class teacher, Mr Godwin Ikechukwu, saying, Siju loves calculation works and also loves drawing and singing while his best artiste is Evangelist Tope Alabi, a gospel singer.

He can sing all the tracks in the woman’s album of his choice, which he said he learnt by listening to his grandma’s car sound system. Siju’s grandma is a school proprietress and he actually had his basiceducation up to primary four in her school and that makes him to be very close to her.

Surprisingly, Siju had never represented Carol School in any competition despite his talent and brilliance since he joined the school.

The head of school explained why she said it is not that the boy doesn’t show interest at the initial stage of the preparation but somehow along the line would back out on his own.

“And so we can’t compel him just as we can’t force any other pupil as well. We do allow our pupils to express themselves while we only guide them once they are in the right direction which is the hallmark of total education,” Mrs Adeaga said.

 

We didn’t pay attention to him all along —Mum

Just as Mrs Adeaga explained, Siju’s mother, Mrs Funke Olawepo, confirmed that truly, her son, who is the first of their two children, loves designing calendar from when he was much younger but that she and her husband never took time to check his artistic works.

“I observed he always asked for sheets of plain paper and designed calendar of any year on monthly basis and also draw our portrait caricature but we didn’t pay attention to him all along.  And despite that, he would still come back to show to us and to me in particular his works. But I would just collect the paper from him and put it aside because it didn’t make any sense to me.

Mrs Olawepo recalled something that happened two years ago when the boy came to show to her a calendar he designed,  “Though, I collected the calender from him as usual, I decided this time around to compare it with the current year (2018) and I realised they didn’t match, not knowing it was for the year 2055. I didn’t look at the heading since I could not imagine anything of such. I just matched it with the current year and then dismissed the boy just as I had done many times until we were invited by the school in June last year to break the news to us.”

Receiving the news as a big surprise just as it is to many others, Siju’s mum said, “We would have discovered this talent as the boy actually wanted us to know because the more we dismissed him, the more he kept coming to show us what he had done but we did not bother to check and we really own him a big apology which we have conveyed to him for not paying attention to his calender work.

When asked if the boy’s talent is genetic, Mrs Olawepo said it was not that they are not brilliant, but Siju’s talent is exceptional.

“And I want to believe it came naturally,” she said. “And that is why we can’t choose a career for him but only to guide and support him and also to pray for him as he moves on in life.”

 

I just know it – Siju

It is, however, amazing that Siju whose best subject is Mathematics cannot also explain how he came about the talent.

His repeated response when asked about this by Saturday Tribune correspondent who also tested him randomly on his own, using three prepared dates, all of which Siju got correctly, was “I just know it.”

He was asked which day was January 1st, 1990; and is December 25th, 2020 and December 25th, 2030, Siju quoted each of them offhand instantaneously as Monday, Friday and Wednesday respectively.

He only repeated each of the dates, saying it is for him to be sure of the question.

 

I can’t say why the boy has calender in his brain —Neuro surgeon

Saturday Tribune sought the opinion of an expert on what could make a small boy have calander in his brain, Dr. Edward Jolayemi, a neuro-surgeon at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, said he could not say since the boy in question is not subjected to medical examination.

“But I know there are many geniuses around as people do a lot of spectacular things,” he said.